About 90 future diplomats attending StarTalk Chinese Immersion Summer Camp at the German Gerena Community School know how to say it - and sing it - in Mandarian, and they know a lot more about language and culture of the 1.4 billion-person nation and the world's second largest economy.

The summer camp, funded with a $90,000 grant from the National Security Agency, is now in its sixth consecutive summer. It is one of many NSA-funded summer language programs, designed to introduce young people to languages including Arabic, Dari, Hindi, Persian, Portuguese, Russian, Swahili, Turkish and Urdu, according to Ann Ferriter, director of the camp.

This year's theme for four-week camp program, which runs until July 17, is "Chinese Dragon's Math Maze - Building Community Through Kindness." The curriculum's emphasis is on mathematics through the median of Mandarin Chinese.

Ferriter, a high school Spanish teacher, and Mei-Ja Hwang, a Chinese teacher at the High School of Science and Technology and Chinese curriculum director for Springfield schools and the immersion camp, gave a tour of the classrooms on Wednesday for U.S. Rep. Richard E. Neal.

The congressman toured classrooms where enthusiastic students from Grades 1 through 8 were learning the language at appropriate degrees of difficulty. Neal expressed an interest in visiting the camp when the Massachusetts-based World Language Task Force traveled to his Washington, D.C., office to garner support for foreign language curriculums.

Neal and Superintendent Daniel J. Warwick, who joined the tour, said the program is invaluable during an age when China is rising and the world economy is going global.

"It's the future," Neal said. "By learning Chinese, these kids will be competitive in the new economy."

The Chinese immersion camp supplements Chinese language instruction that is available during the school year in Springfield schools. Chinese was introduced into the school's curriculum in 1987 when Hwang was hired to start it.

Instruction starts with the basics in the earlier grades and increases in difficulty as the students progress to the next level, Hwang said. "Older students are using computers to write assessments of what they've learned - 'I learned how to order at a restaurant' or 'I learned how to get directions,'" she said.

Even parents are learning a few words in Mandarin. Pam Mathison Morales, whose 7-year-old son is in enrolled in the three week program that runs through July 17, said she and her husband share drop-off and pick-up duties and are picking up some Chinese in the process.

"Our pediatrician said these kinds of language programs are good for brain development in young children," Mathison Morales said, who learned about the program through her job at MassMutual. "My son loves it," she said. "The children are fully engaged in learning."